Escape From the Deep (4 page)

Every so often, now that the tide had turned in favor of the Americans, a well-placed story about a submarine’s thrilling exploits helped remind those who had forgotten about the Silent Service. What the public didn’t know was that the Silent Service was now sinking more than half of all Japanese ships—more than the Army’s air forces and the U.S. Navy’s surface ships and carrier planes combined.

As far as submariners were concerned, the publicity mattered little. Staying alive concerned them far more. By 1944, every man in the service had friends who were “missing in action,” on eternal patrol. The all-volunteer force suffered the highest mortality rate of all the armed services. There were few casualties. Unlike a surface ship, when a submarine was sunk no one was expected to return.
¹⁴

THE SILENT SERVICE’S greatest single injury in World War II was inflicted not by the enemy, but by a politician. In 1943, sixty-eight-year-old Congressman Andrew Jackson May, a member of the House Military Affairs Committee, held a press conference and mentioned the unmentionable—Japanese claims of submarine sinkings were way too high because they set their depth charges to go off at too shallow a depth.

His statement outraged every submariner in the service. It was an amazing breach of security, unrivaled during the war. And it didn’t take long for the Japanese navy to learn of it through newspaper reports, and then quickly adjust its depth-charge settings accordingly. Lockwood was furious. “I hear Congressman May said the depth charges are not set deep enough,” he explained in a letter dripping with sarcasm. “He would be pleased to know [the Japanese] set them deeper now.” Later, Lockwood stated: “I consider that indiscretion cost us ten submarines and eight hundred officers and men.”
¹⁵

To O’Kane and the other submarine captains, it was soon clear that the Japanese were dropping their charges at the right depth and with greater accuracy. They knew that the near-deadly experience of the USS
Puffer
on its first patrol in October 1943 provided more than enough evidence of the effects of May’s treasonable stupidity. For nearly thirty-eight hours, at 500 feet below, the
Puffer
’s crew had been pounded by a terrier-like Japanese sub-chaser.

Men became so dehydrated in the pressure-cooker-like conditions that they could not replenish their body fluids and vomited everything they drank. When they stepped from the maneuvering room, where the thermometer showed 125 degrees, to the after-torpedo room, where it was a relatively cool 100 degrees, their bodies seemed to turn to jelly, wracked by shivering and maddening chills.
¹⁶

O’Kane learned all about the
Puffer
’s terrifying experience from a report issued to captains that gave a blow-by-blow account of the ordeal.
¹⁷
At 500 feet, the
Puffer
had barely managed to survive. The lesson was obvious to O’Kane: The
Tang
and her crew needed to be able to dive as fast as possible and stay as deep as possible if they were going to stand a chance against an ever more accurate and deadly enemy. During practice dives, O’Kane worked his crew hard, pushing them to the edge, until the
Tang
was able to plunge from the surface to periscope depth—some 60 feet below—in just thirty seconds.

Then, wanting to know what would happen at unprecedented depths, O’Kane ordered the
Tang
down to far beyond her specified test depth of 300 feet. At 450 feet, the
Tang
started to rebel. A gauge line broke and a hose burst. Thankfully, a quick-witted crewmember jammed a raw potato into the line to stop the leak and crisis was averted. At 525 feet, however, there was more significant damage, forcing the
Tang
to surface for repairs.

The next day, O’Kane took the
Tang
even deeper. The old hands were astonished when she reached 580 feet. This time, a vent sprang a leak. Again, the boat surfaced for repairs. It seemed as if O’Kane had a death wish: The very next day, at first light, he ordered his crew to take the
Tang
back down, deeper than before. Soon, the needle on the depth gauge pointed beyond 575 feet. Then it reached the 600-foot mark. It would not record any deeper. Still the
Tang
continued inexorably down. No U.S. submarine had ever ventured so far from the surface. O’Kane asked one of his officers to hold her level.
¹⁸
While several crew members struggled to stay calm, the
Tang
maneuvered back and forth with ease, her thick hull resisting the incredible sea pressure of nineteen tons per square foot.

The
Tang
was able to take it, but the same could not be said for all of the crew. One of the old hands aboard, a chief cook named Marvin E. Breedlove, was convinced that O’Kane was going to get them all killed—he was some modern-day Ahab, a reckless buccaneer obsessed with sinking “Nips.”

After docking, the sturdily built Breedlove approached wiry bantam-weight Murray Frazee and angrily demanded a transfer. Frazee said that was not possible—the cook would have to complete at least one patrol before being granted a transfer.
¹⁹

“Well, if you’re not going to do anything about it now, I just won’t show up tomorrow morning.”

Frazee, capable of ruthless efficiency and used to playing the role of bad cop for O’Kane, turned to another grizzled veteran, Chief Torpedoman’s Mate William Ballinger, who was also chief of the boat, and said: “Chief, you heard what he said, didn’t you?”

“I sure did!”

Frazee grabbed the cook’s shirt and yanked him so he was close to his face.

“Listen, you son of a bitch, if you’re not here tomorrow morning at 0800 when we sail, I’m going to have you tried for desertion in time of war and get you shot! Now, have you got that straight?”
²⁰

The cook left the
Tang
after her first patrol.

Three patrols and six months later, the
Tang
’s crew had had plenty of opportunities to see O’Kane in action. There were no longer any doubters. O’Kane’s men had come to respect and trust him like no other captain they had known.

The bond was special, for a submarine skipper has absolute power over life and death, far more so than the commander of a surface ship. The wrong decision at 600 feet below could be fatal. An error in a frigate might, at worst, mean taking to a lifeboat. “O’Kane was very calculating, brilliant, and very aggressive—too much so for some of the crew,” explained Bill Leibold. “But they all said if they had to go to war with any captain, it would be O’Kane.”
²¹

DICK O’KANE WATCHED as a refit crew attended to the
Tang
. He could see them scurrying about the
Tang’s
decks, loading torpedoes, readying her for the next patrol. It was Wednesday, September 20, 1944, a beautiful fall day in Pearl Harbor.

A Jeep pulled up at the dockside.

The driver said he had an urgent message for O’Kane: Vice Admiral Lockwood wanted to see O’Kane immediately.

A tanned and fit O’Kane was soon seated in Lockwood’s office. There were the usual pleasantries and good humor. Then the always energetic Lockwood, with three stars on his shirt collar, got down to business. He would not normally provide his skippers with a choice of missions, but O’Kane had to be handled with more finesse than the others. Lockwood laid out the alternatives: join a wolf pack or operate alone in the Pacific’s most dangerous waters—the Formosa Strait, between Formosa and mainland China.

The Formosa Strait was strewn with extensive minefields and ploughed by Japanese antisubmarine patrols that continued around the clock.
²²
“Offering little room for ships to maneuver,” recalled O’Kane, “the strait was an ideal place for submarines to lurk in ambush; the great bulk of Japanese shipping passed through here on the way to and from the South China Sea. Unfortunately for the Americans, however, the enemy held the coasts on both sides of the strait, making it as perilous for the hunters as the hunted.”
²³

In four patrols, O’Kane had already sunk seventeen ships for a total of eighty-two thousand tons. He was hungry for more. There was no question that he would go it alone and head for the Formosa Strait, the last hot spot in the Pacific undersea war.

“How soon could you be ready to head west? All the way west?” asked Lockwood.

“Four days sir,” replied O’Kane. “But there is one thing I request in return.”

“Yes?”

“Admiral, the
Tang
has been banging out patrols at nearly twice the customary rate. Most have been short, but so has every upkeep. My boat needs an ST scope [radar periscope], and I need something to take back to my crew. I’d like our next upkeep scheduled for Mare Island.”

Returning to Mare Island in San Francisco Bay would mean the crew could reconnect with their families during extensive shore leave.

“I appreciate what you say,” said Lockwood, “and I’ll take care of it.”

Lockwood and O’Kane shook hands.

O’Kane then called his crew together. Ever anxious to return to combat, he had already cut the
Tang
’s period in dry dock short by four days, irritating some of them.
²⁴
To cushion the blow, O’Kane told his men that after this next patrol they would have an extended furlough on the U.S. mainland: The
Tang
would need a major overhaul and it would last at least six weeks in sunny California.

O’Kane then broke the news that he had volunteered the
Tang
for the toughest assignment possible. He could not tell them where they were going until they left Pearl Harbor. But he could say one thing for sure: There would be good hunting. And the risks would be worth it if they managed to sink several ships.

It was customary in the Silent Service to allow any man who requested a transfer to do so without fear of being punished or stigmatized. Now was the time for any doubters to leave. None did.

Floyd Caverly later recalled the crew’s reaction to O’Kane’s news that they were embarking on their most hazardous mission to date: “We knew that we were going into very dangerous waters. We knew it would be tough. But we also knew we were going to the only place where there was good hunting. O’Kane warned us that anything could happen out there. We were within aircraft range, destroyer range . . . It was hot territory. But where else would we want to go?”
²⁵

Dick O’Kane, like his boat and his crew, was also long overdue for a rest, having served under Morton and then completing four patrols with the
Tang
. He knew it and so did the top brass; the commander of the submarine fleet, Vice Admiral Lockwood, did not want his captains to burn out with fatal results. This next patrol might be O’Kane’s last of the war, so he was determined to go out with a series of mighty bangs, making it his best patrol. He was already confident that once the navy had awarded his men medals for their fourth patrol, the
Tang
would be the most decorated U.S. submarine in the Pacific.
²⁶
On her fifth patrol, probably his last as her skipper, the
Tang
would, he hoped, seal her record as the greatest U.S. submarine of the entire war.

3

The Most Dangerous Mission

D
ICK O’KANE STOOD on the bridge of the
Tang,
watching as final supplies and the last of the submarine’s twenty-four torpedoes were brought aboard.
¹
Hoses and power lines snaked along the
Tang
’s deck and then sagged across the few feet separating her from the dock. There was a sudden flurry of activity on the dockside as Fleet Admiral Nimitz and Vice Admiral Lockwood arrived with an impressive entourage. A few minutes later, they began to award the
Tang
’s crew their medals for the third patrol.
²

O’Kane received a second Navy Cross. Silver Stars went to Chief Quartermaster Sidney Jones, Frank Springer, the newly promoted executive officer who had replaced Frazee, and Lieutenant Hank Flanagan. Radio Technician’s Mate Floyd Caverly got a Bronze Star. “These presentations were not all, however,” recalled O’Kane, “for more important than any one or all of them combined was the award of the Presidential Unit Citation. Signed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, it cited the actions during the
Tang
’s first three patrols, and from that moment every man who served in the
Tang
would wear the ribbon with its blue, gold, and red horizontal stripes, and with a star if aboard during the actions cited. I believed our boat now led all others in personal and unit awards. In any case, no submarine captain could have been prouder of his fighting ship and men.”
³

Before the
Tang
left the dock, Vice Admiral Lockwood boarded and drank coffee with O’Kane in his stateroom. The coffee was served by the
Tang
’s steward’s mate, Howard Walker, one of only two black men on board. A chronic gambler, this Kentucky native was lucky to still be on the
Tang
. At the beginning of the previous patrol, he held up the submarine’s departure because he had lost track of time during a marathon craps game.
⁴

According to Caverly, Walker was not court-martialed for this, or for many other lapses, because O’Kane had come to depend on him so much. “Walker really catered to the officers. The Old Man’s shoes were always polished. His clothes were always folded and his shirts beautifully ironed—most of the officers couldn’t iron a dish rag.”
⁵